Statistics office develops Internet base

The National Statistical Office is to planning to launch Thailand's first National Information Centre by adopting technology to generate and provide statistical information electronically to both government- and private-sector organisations.

National Statistical Office  (NSO) secretary-general Thananoot Treetipbut said the project was backed by the philosophy that information engendered power.

It will combine existing information held by the NSO with further statistical information to be sourced and developed in the future. It will be offered to targeted users in both the government and private sectors by allowing them to access the National Information Centre directly over an Internet-based services platform.

"Ultimately, this project aims to serve the government's decision-making needs and to help its management capabilities by providing essential statistical information," Thananoot said.

There will be three phases involved in setting up the National Information Centre. The first phase is expected to be completed this year; the second next year; and the third before the end of 2011. It will require about Bt50 million for hardware, software, solutions and training.

"In the first phase, we will install scanners at all of the NSO's 75 provincial offices," Thananoot said, adding that for the National Information Centre to be effective, the process of developing statistical information requires the adoption of technology as well as process by which it is disseminated to end-users.

On the development side, the NSO plans to speed up its processing of statistical information. The scanners deployed in its 75 regional offices will feed raw field data, collected remotely, into the central office with greater accuracy.

"At the central office we already feed raw data into our computer system with scanners, but it still takes a lot of time - around nine months - to develop each statistical report because all the raw data must come in from all parts of the country, and the centre has only six machines," she said.

Soon, instead of paper-based questionnaires being delivered to Bangkok from all parts of the country, officers in remote areas will scan the completed questionnaires into the computer system and send them to a central server electronically.

Moreover, when the scanners are equipped with intelligent optical-character-recognition software, the National Information Centre will be able to process reports more rapidly and make analyses available in a much shorter time.

"With the new system, we expect to be able to develop statistical reports and analyses within only three months, instead of the present nine months," Thananoot said.

The NSO also plans to transform its data centre into a Web-based service in order not only to integrate information from government agencies, but also to facilitate easy access to statistical information.

She said there were currently about 3,000 information sets held by about 20 government agencies that were ready to be shared with the NSO. These will be integrated into the NSO's Web-based data service centre this year, along with a further 1,000 information sets that are currently under development.

In next year's second phase, more data from provincial offices will be integrated into the system to complete statistical information at country and provincial levels. In the third phase, in 2011, the NSO will allow education institutes and private sector organisations - including associations, research centres and chambers of commerce - to access statistical information in order to take advantage from it.

"We will set different levels of accessibility to different information layers according to the nature of the users. Implementation of the Nation Information Centre will not mean that anybody can come in and browse through all the information in our data centre," Thananoot said.